Budget cuts truncate imaginations, affirm the three visuals of the #SauvonsLaLecture campaign broadcast on social networks and in the press. The organizations thus deplore the quiet destruction of an entire value chain and a common good for all citizens.
The book sector nevertheless represents the least expensive cultural sector for the State while being the first in terms of turnover. For the signatories, reading constitutes a tool of emancipation which underpins our civilization.
Reading is an essential common good, a lever for emancipation and public health which deserves a public policy that meets the social, democratic and cultural challenges, they conclude.
Excluding public establishments, these intervention expenditures actually increased from 23.2 million euros in 2025 to 17.4 million in 2026. This budgetary contraction comes at a time when, according to recent statistics published by the Ministry of Culture, the French spend 6.3 times more time on screens than reading books, a ratio which reaches ten times more among young people.
In 2026, the State reduced by 25% its credits allocated to bookstores, publishing houses, literary events and libraries, an orientation that the finance bill for 2027 ratifies according to the collective.
Excluding public establishments, these intervention expenses have, in fact, increased from 23.2 million euros in 2025 to 17.4 million in 2026, according to them.
According to recent statistics published by the Ministry of Culture, the French spend 6.3 times more time on screens than reading books, and among them, young people spend ten times more time there.